Men With Congential Condition Win Gold Medals For Punching Women In The Face

Disinformation and a developmental distinction without a difference

Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting are men. Both of them were identified as male and excluded from boxing women anymore in 2022 and 2023. Khelif initially appealed this decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which oversees the laboratories that tested both boxers, but withdrew. Lin Yu-ting did not appeal the test at all. The reason why neither man felt likely to win such an appeal is that they are both men.

As Doriane Lambelet Coleman explained in Quillette when the Paris Olympics began, both men were likely born with a disorder of sexual development (DSD) called 5ARD. Males with this condition are often mistaken for female. Rare globally, the condition is common enough in the Dominican Republic that such boys are known as “güevedoces” — roughly, “huevos [‘balls’] at age twelve,” as Arty Morty notes. There is no mystery in what both men are. They are men with a DSD, a distinction without a difference when matching two sparring partners.

When the International Boxing Association (IBA…